


thy love is better than wine

by myconstant



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: spoiler_song, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:08:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myconstant/pseuds/myconstant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time, there is a blue bowtie and a Venus flytrap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thy love is better than wine

**Author's Note:**

> for promethia_tenk at the 2010 spoiler song holiday exchange.

> The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, saw ye him whom my soul loveth?  
>  It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go.  
>  **( the song of songs 3:3-4 )**

 

 

River Song is neither a woman of science nor a woman of faith.

She has seen captive planets trapped in their orbit around giant suns and she has witnessed stars collapse. There have been impossible miracles and that one particularly memorable lunch with Joan of Arc. If there must be something for her to believe in, it is that anything is possible.

And yet there are a few rules that hold constant throughout time and space, like how it’s sometimes morally acceptable to blur the truth (she’s seen the universe hang in the balance more than a few times, never has it once come down to solely a lie). Or how no one should ever speak to her in the morning before she’s had at least one cup of coffee. Or that whenever the doors to the TARDIS open and he saunters out with a young face and a slightly crooked bow tie, she should prepare herself for a relatively dreary afternoon of barely being tolerated. When he wears a tweed jacket, he fights back against everything she says and only stops short of questioning her right to breathe and it’s disorienting when this occurs not two hours after she’s left their bed, which sometimes happens to be the case.

Out of all of his faces, this one is by far the most distant, the one with the walls around him built the highest. To an extent, his determination to never let her in hurts, because behind the guns and hieroglyphics and carefully drawn mystery, she too has a heart.

Yet somehow it’s only fair that part of him will never be _her_ Doctor, because she knows that she will never entirely be _his_ River. She thinks she might even deserve it - there are things that linger in her conscious, a twinge of guilt that appears every now and then. She tries her hardest to hide it.

Besides, she’s never thought that she would love all of him.

These are things that River Song firmly believes in. So when there is a knock one afternoon in March and she finds _him_ , standing there on her doorstep and grinning like he’s positively elated to see her, she considers slamming the door in his face.

It’s only curiosity that tells her not to.

 

 

This time, there is a blue bowtie and a Venus flytrap. She stares pointedly at the potted plant and then back up at him. He shrugs and extends it outwards for her to take.

“Flat-warming present,” he explains, adjusting the sleeves of his jacket. “And it’s actually from Venus. Venus, the florist in Guangzhou. Slight technicality. Careful, though. It bites.”

“You missed the party by a few months,” she tells him. The plant goes on top a table by the front door. The ring on her left hand discreetly follows, but he’s too busy studying the chipped paint on her mailbox to notice.

“Another technicality,” he remarks with a smile. Over his shoulder, she sees the TARDIS waiting along the lane in the same place it was yesterday.

The Doctor sidesteps past her.

She lets him.

 

 

“The Rothko’s new,” he observes once inside. “Been to Earth recently?”

River closes the front door and turns. The Doctor keeps studying the art lining the walls of her flat, stepping closer to examine a Rauschenberg before rocking back on his heels.

“Maybe,” she replies. “I have a thesis due in the fifty-first century that can’t happen unless someone saves all this from getting blown up in the twenty-second.”

“So I’ve taken to stealing then. Wonderful.”

“ _Preserving_. Which is nothing you don’t already do on a semi-regular basis.”

He laughs softly, shaking his head and usually, she’d object. There’s still something about this that she hasn’t figured out yet.

“Dare I ask if there’s some sort of problem?”

“Problem?” he echoes.

“Why you are here. The end of all reality? Incoming alien invasion? Cat stuck in a tree?”

He grins. “Not to my knowledge.”

She takes a step towards him and the floorboards creak appropriately. “ _You_ don’t know me yet.”

“Is that your way of saying you’d prefer a different face, then?” he asks. He looks at her from below that unruly fringe of hair and River remains decidedly unimpressed. She folds her arms over chest and shifts her weight to one side. “You’d rather I _knew_ you?”

“Sweetie.” It comes out sounding like something like a warning and she’s grateful for it. “Why are you here?”

His eyes flicker to the ceiling. “I suppose I’ll cut to the chase then.”

“Please do.”

So River Song, a woman who has seen both the stars and the sacred, who knows that there is no such thing as impossible, is shocked when he suddenly turns on his heels and lowers his face to hers. He kisses her slowly and deliberately, his hands framing her face, and everything about this (except the tweed fabric clutched in her hands) feels too familiar. After a moment, she reacts, opening her mouth and pulling at his jacket and abruptly, they become frenetic. There are changing angles and her nose bumping against his and his hands moving from her hair to her face to her shoulders back to her hair then down to her hips.

Somewhere in all of this movement, she knows he’s trying to prove some kind of important point. What it is, she isn’t quite sure, but River really can’t bring herself to care.

(This also isn’t the first time he's done this. He doesn’t know that just yet.)

 

 

Gradually, a thought occurs:

“I’ll be very upset if you turn out to be some sort of malign clone copy bent on universal destruction and the like,” she tells him as he kisses his way down her neck. Her back is pressed against the wall. “You’re being so agreeable right now.”

At this, he laughs softly and she feels it reverberate down her spine.

 

 

They litter her flat with clothes: his socks across the floor, her trousers on the counter, tweed jacket discarded over her desk. She’s glad the Mona Lisa went back to the Louvre last Wednesday - River does not believe in leaving witnesses.

“I actually like the tweed bit,” she says as he shrugs off the jacket, her hands at work unfastening his belt. “Trust me. You’ll someday do much worse.”

He nips at her earlobe and it is then that she becomes aware of tension pooling in her abdomen, the growing wetness between her legs. “I’ll remember that.”

“Oh, I _know_ you will.”

Off goes her jumper, his fingertips grazing the expanse of her waist and she can’t stop herself from shivering. In only her knickers with her hair a mess, she breathes the word _bedroom_ and with hands and lips and teeth still in motion, they navigate through the doorway (note: she has had practice in the art, he’ll soon get better). The backs of his legs hit the bed and she smiles mischievously before nudging him backwards. He falls gracelessly onto the mattress with a slight yelp and she quickly climbs over him on hands and knees, her hair falling around her face. She thinks she hears a groan or something similar.

“Now that I have you like this, tell me. What are you doing here?”

He meets her eyes and offers a crooked smile. “Finally getting around to saying you’re welcome," he says around a groan.

She can’t hide her smirk. “What did I have to thank you for?”

It’s then that he swiftly flips them over, mentioning something about spoilers in her ear. It springs to her mind that she likes his smile.

“Oh, shut - ”

The end of her sentence is cut off with a short soft moan as he brings a hand to her breast and gently kneads and tweaks. She decides that she likes his hands too - they’re always moving, touching, gesturing wildly, and _finally_ being put to worthwhile use. She knows that one day, he’ll be a bit more aggressive - tugging and pulling and pinning - but right now it’s more about the tracing and mapping and learning. And really, River doesn’t mind.

He replaces his hand with his mouth and she sharply inhales when his tongue darts out at her peaking nipple. His fingertips slide down the expanse of her stomach until they dip between her legs. He pushes two fingers into her, warm and wet, and River is gasping. Her heels slip against the sheets.

The Doctor looks down at her and for a moment, she thinks she can see the one constant thread binding his regenerations into the same man; she thinks she can see all of him.

“Oh, you’re beautiful, River,” he says in her ear before sliding down the length of her body. “You’re stunning.”

She finds the precious time to exhale before her back arches up away from the bed.

 

 

"But don't think that it's easy,” she says faintly, her breathing short and quick. “Convincing you eight - although now I suppose the number’s nine - different times -"

He abruptly looks up from between her thighs, her legs thrown over his shoulders, his mouth slack.

" _Nine?_ "

River laughs to herself and tangles her fingers in his hair. She has always liked to keep him guessing.

 

 

When he finally enters her with a quick thrust, the shadows on the floor are longer and their bodies are slick with sweat. Her legs wrap tight around his waist and his hands grasp at her hips and an unintelligible string of words (maybe hers, possibly his) echo. There’s a rhythm to their collision, the steady beat that guides her backwards and him forwards, the inelegantly honest sound of skin moving against skin.

Behind her closed eyes, she sees a dusty hotel room in Laos (two months back for her, seventy years forward for him) and as she rocks against him harder, she thinks that’s the problem with time travelers: although he cannot be physically closer, there’s still a distance. Someday, she’ll figure it all out.

River feels their edges blur and her hands move to frame his face. For at least a little while here, he’s not a stranger.

“Do you know who I am?” she breathes as she moves around his cock. "Do you?"

The Doctor kisses her with no restraint in response, and she realizes that he’s given her neither a yes or a no. She thinks he’s probably right.

When she comes, she says nothing at all.

 

 

At half past seven in the morning, River wakes up to sunlight on her pillow and the sound of the Doctor snoring.

She wonders what she will do.


End file.
